These workers should get first crack at treatment along with health-care professionals and first responders

10/08/2008|hrreporter.com|Last Updated: 07/31/2009

If a flu pandemic hits, utility workers, truck drivers and communication personnel will be as valuable in the ensuing crisis as nurses will be and should get top priority when it comes to receiving medical care, according to a new study.

Conventional thinking is that nurses, paramedics, firefighters, and those most at risk for contracting the illness should get first crack at vaccines and other treatment.

But other workers are just as crucial in helping society weather a pandemic and deserve first crack at treatment, said Nancy Kass, deputy director of public health at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study